o
bad--too bad to repeat.' Here the vicar shook his head and laughed
inwardly.

'Tell it--do!' said the ladies.

'I mustn't quite tell it.'

'That's absurd,' said Mrs. Swancourt.

'It was only about a man who, by the same careful system of observation,
was known to deceive persons for more than two years into the belief
that he kept a barometer by stealth, so exactly did he foretell all
changes in the weather by the braying of his ass and the temper of his
wife.'

Elfride laughed.

'Exactly,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'And in just the way that those learnt
the signs of nature, I have learnt the language of her illegitimate
sister--artificiality; and the fibbing of eyes, the contempt of
nose-tips, the indignation of back hair, the laughter of clothes, the
cynicism of footsteps, and the various emotions lying in walking-stick
twirls, hat-liftings, the elevation of parasols, the carriage of
umbrellas, become as A B C to me.

'Just look at that daughter's sister class of mamma in the carriage
across there,' she continued to Elfride, pointing with merely a turn of
her eye. 'The absorbing self-consciousness of her position that is shown
by her countenance is most humiliating to a lover of one's country. You
would hardly believe, would you, that members of a Fashionable World,
whose professed zero is far above the highest degree of the humble,
could be so ignorant of the elementary instincts of reticence.'

'How?'

'Why, to bear on their faces, as plainly as on a phylactery, the
inscription, "Do, pray, look at the coronet on my panels."'

'Really, Charlotte,' said the vicar, 'you see as much in faces as Mr.
Puff saw in Lord Burleigh's nod.'

Elfride could not but admire the beauty of her fellow countrywomen,
especially since herself and her own few acquaintances had always
been slightly sunburnt or marked on the back of the hands by a
bramble-scratch at this time of the year.

'And what lovely flowers and leaves they wear in their bonnets!' she
exclaimed.

'Oh yes,' returned Mrs. Swancourt. 'Some of them are even more striking
in colour than any real ones. Look at that beautiful rose worn by the
lady inside the rails. Elegant vine-tendrils introduced upon the stem as
an improvement upon prickles, and all growing so naturally just over her
ear--I say growing advisedly, for the pink of the petals and the pink
of her handsome cheeks are equally from Nature's hand to the eyes of the
most casual observer.'

'But pra